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How James Bond has been out-Bonded

While Bond has spent 50 years battling villains and bedding beauties, competitors from Bourne to Batman have inevitably arrived.

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall. (Francois Duhamel / MGM)

By Jason Anderson

Sun., Nov. 4, 2012

Dashing, deadly and decked out with the coolest accessories — James Bond was most definitely the whole package when he arrived on movie screens in 1962. Though Daniel Craig does his best to freshen the franchise for the 21st century with this week’s opening of Skyfall, the suave secret agent is no longer alone.

While Bond has spent the last 50 years battling villains and bedding beauties, other competitors have inevitably arrived on the scene. And when it comes to particular talents and qualities that used to be synonymous with Ian Fleming’s superspy, 007 may very well have been out-Bonded by other movie heroes. Perhaps M would be wise to recruit some of these rivals.

Category: Cunning

Bond’s rival: Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross

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Given James’ tendency to check into foreign hotels under his own name, it doesn’t take that much to be craftier than 007. Over the course of their Robert Ludlum-spawned movie adventures, Jason Bourne and his fellow black-ops rogue Aaron Cross have continually found ingenious ways to evade their pursuers and complete their missions. The lesson here? Top-secret performance-enhancing drugs beat vodka martinis every time.

Category: Deadliness

Bond’s rival: Bryan Mills (a.k.a. Liam Neeson in the Taken movies)

Sure, this ex-CIA operative may look even craggier than James did in the latter-day Sean Connery installments but Mills cracks heads and snaps necks with an enthusiasm that belies his age. And whereas Bond occasionally takes a break from the mayhem to attend a swanky party or high-stakes poker game, this geezer’s pretty much all about the chasing and the killing.

Category: Cool gadgets and vehicles

Bond’s rival: Batman/Bruce Wayne

What with the U.K. mired in the same economic woes as its European neighbours, it only stands to reason that its cash-strapped intelligence branch just can’t devote the same kind of budget to fancy hardware as the deep-pocketed likes of Bruce Wayne. Compared to Batman’s flashy arsenal, Bond’s accoutrements can seem as lame as a leaky hovercraft.

Category: Suaveness and wit

Bond’s rival: Iron Man/Tony Stark

The maverick industrialist-slash-superhero may be known to occasionally put an iron-clad foot in his mouth but he’s way too sharp to ever resort to the cringe-inducing one-liners that comprised James’ idea of wit back in the Roger Moore days. Stark wins this one by a raised eyebrow.

Category: Frequent flyer miles

Bond’s rival: Ethan Hunt

007 has certainly been no slouch when it comes to criss-crossing the globe — locations for Skyfall included Istanbul and Shanghai. But in the last two Mission: Impossible installments alone, the IMF’s finest has performed feats of derring-do in Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Dubai and Mumbai. Ethan probably has his own travel pillow.

Category: Britishness

Bond’s rivals: The men of the Circus in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Whereas James may epitomize all that was cool about the U.K. as the country entered the Swinging ’60s, he’s out of step with the grimmer image that prevailed during the nation’s tougher days in the ’70s (and again in the post-meltdown 2010s). With their sallow complexions and militantly drab wardrobes, the world-weary spies in the most recent adaptation of John Le Carre’s classic exude a far sourer and arguably timelier sort of Britishness.

Category: Political incorrectness

Bond’s rival: OSS 117

Viewers of Bond’s adventures in the ’60s and ’70s may sometimes blanch at the racial and cultural stereotypes that once populated the franchise. Yet this French secret agent — who first hit screens a full five years before 007 did in Dr. No — takes the cake when it comes to un-PC attitudes, especially in two recent comedies made by actor Jean Dujardin and filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius before they hit it big with The Artist.

Category: Libido

Bond’s rival: Austin Powers

While James’ penchant for promiscuity was famously curtailed during the Timothy Dalton era, Mike Myers’ bespectacled buffoon behaves like the sexual revolution never ended. Of course, whether he makes you horny depends entirely on your attitudes toward another era’s dental standards.

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